Not every living room has space for a long sofa, and they’re never as wide as a sofabed. Plus they can’t accommodate two people unless they’re drunk and in their 20s.
Or, just get the aforementioned Procrustes to saw your feet off.
My sofa, in looks, if not actual dimensions of the one pictured. Mine is 10 feet long and when you take the back cushions off, two people can comfortably sleep on it. I wouldn’t want to share it with someone not close, family or SO.
Coming at the hide-a-bed issue from a different angle, this tempurpedic sleeper chair is one of the most evil machinations of man ever devised that I can think of as a (former) mover. Heavy, doesn’t fit through doors real well, opens with enough spring loaded power to cause injury and break several layers of stretch wrap when you turn it on its side so you can manuever it through a door. Also it opens in a different way, instead of popping up and out and over the front of the framing of the chair, the entire front of it just slides out, unfolding the mattress as it goes. I’ve encountered 3 of these as a mover and after the first one, I 've refused to move them with out a third party coming to disassemble them first. But it has a real actual tempupedic mattress in there, so probably comfortable a heck.
I like the Aerobed brand blow up mattresses. Plug it in and it’s inflated in a minute. They don’t last forever, but when mine finally started to slowly deflate overnight, I bought a new one right away. It’s far more comfortable than any sofa-bed I’ve been unfortunate enough to sleep on.
People are right that they suck the warmth right out of you. If it’s cold out you need to put a couple of blankets between your body and the mattress to hold the heat. On the plus side they sleep nice and cool in the summer.
I got COVID earlier this year and had to sleep in my home office to prevent anyone else from getting sick.
Day 1 - Sleeping on Carpet
Even with three covers underneath me and a back-rest pillow it was the most uncomfortable thing ever
Day 2 - Sleeping Bag
I brought out my only sleeping bag and put it on top of the above. Despite it being extra cushioned and also me sleeping on top of it, it did very little to actually solve the cushion problems and had the same bad night’s sleep.
Day 3 - Air Mattress
I was bought an Intex air mattress for $40 at Wal-Mart. Twin size. Overall actually pretty decent for a solo sleeper, put a cover over it and it basically feels like a regular mattress. Had to repump it every night but wasn’t too much work. Unfortunately it’s a beast to handle when I wanted to move it out of the way to give myself more space, takes too long to fully deflate so I just had to push it up against a wall.
The only halfway decent hideable bed I’ve seen are the ones that are low slung ones that fit under another, primary bed, rather than any sort of foldable excuses. They tend to be thin, but in the day and age of memory foam mattresses they probably work better than the ones I remember from my youth. But they were almost always a double at most, not much fun for more than one.
I have never once had a good experience on any of the folding sofa models, although the last time I was staying with at a friend who had one, I had the foresight to buy a 2 inch memory foam topper from amazon and ship it to him before we arrived. It didn’t completely mitigate the hip-level bar in the bed (I’m a side sleeper by default) but worked adequately if I slept on my back.
I’ve actually had pretty good luck with the slightly more expensive modern inflatable beds - the built in electric pumps means a lot less work, and if you inflate prior to bed, you’ll have minimal loss in the night and the internal baffles make it a lot less like trying to sleep on beach ball. But I have found even the more expensive models have a highish fail rate - figure a few years (2-3) of occasional use (say 4-6 a year) and they’ll almost always have a unrecoverable failure.
Having slept in various countries in hotels and other accommodations. Also homeless for a couple short periods. So slept outdoors, and in various odd locations. My minimal bed requirements are, not a cold hard slab. No unwanted critters in it. But I do agree, hide a beds are so annoying. Close to being a bed, with torture device accents.
The following conversation(s) with relatives:
“Why do you put pillows under our mattress? A little sagging won’t hurt.”
“Why do you bring you own pillows? We have perfectly good pillows here!”
“Why are you sleeping in the cold? Let me turn the thermostat back up to 80.”
“Why do you lug that weird machine and mask everywhere? We never needed those in my day.”
“I saw your light on. Why are you awake at midnight? Let me come in and talk to you.”
“Why are you up so early? You should be sleeping more.”
and now…
“Why do you always stay in your RV?”
Oh, if only this was an option for us.
This trip will be the first time we’re getting a hotel instead of staying with relatives, and I’m really relieved for a lot of reasons - the bed being the main one, but also bedtime/wake time differences. I’m usually ready to crash around 9 because I tend to get up around 5. This absolutely doesn’t work for a hide-a-bed in the living room where everyone else stays up till 11.
Fortunately, this aunt isn’t offended - at least her email was understanding. But for something like this, I consider our need for sleep more important than her hurt feelings. We’ll be facing a 10+ hour drive the next morning - sleep definitely trumps all.
When my ex- and I went shopping for a sleeper/sofa, the salesman asked us “Do you want this bed to be comfortable or uncomfortable?”
The “guest bed” in my mom’s house isn’t all that uncomfortable, but it has one of those terrible blankets (don’t even know how to describe it, maybe velvet Volkswagen seat cover feel), but it sits right over this weird heating system that the house has that does some kind of circulation all night. Sounds like you are sleeping next to a truckstop. Low grumble just enough to irritate you all night long. And that room always seems to be about 10 degrees hotter than the (already too hot) rest of the house.
This guy was good!
You know, if we talk about my mom’s current house that she’s lived in for 16 years now, the guest bed is in a very nice separate room (actually a separate “casita,” this being New Mexico) with an attached bathroom.
However, the guest bed, despite being new-ish and very nice, is just too short for me. I have to sleep in a fetal position lest my feet stick out into space at the foot of the bed. So it’s not quite the ideal sleeping arrangement.
My inlaws have 2 guest beds - a queen size and a full size. Oh how I hate when we’re stuck on the smaller one, since our bed at home is a king…
I’m easy, but I hate the blow-up beds. They are terrible.
Sofa beds can be okay. When we’re on vacation, my kids both prefer to sleep on the sofa bed than in their own normal bed. Perhaps it’s the novelty. That said, they both (almost 8 and 6), like to sleep in their tent on the floor at home (with just a thin blanket laid down) than their own beds.
We still have a futon in our living room (been meaning to buy a couch for five years – we used to have a big sectional in the old house, but it didn’t fit with the dimensions of the room in the new house) and I’ve slept on it many a time, and it’s perfectly comfortable for me. We have two spare twin beds in the house, and I prefer the futon. I like firmer surfaces. The one thing I really hate is hotel pillows. They are invariably too frickin big and slippery for me to sleep comfortably on. I don’t know how anyone likes those monstrosities, but presumably the vast majority of people down have a problem with them. I’ve resorted to sleeping on a folder up coat to avoid the crick in my neck those things give me.
Sofa beds are rarely even OK, and usually awful. I’ve been know to take the bed out of the sofa frame and place it on the floor, which usually works better.
Air mattresses OTOH I have had success with, and also had guests that have appreciated them, though temperature can be an issue as well as firmness.
You can rent an RV. But if you aren’t RV-ers it may not be a good idea (having to learn the systems etc.). I’ve read lots of conventional wisdom that it’s better to rent an RV than buy one (since most only take them out a couple times a year).
Do you suppose mfrs make them deliberately uncomfortable so your guests don’t stay too long?
The bed in our camper was achieved by folding out the couch…really it was like a futon. It wasn’t bad for comfort, but it was maybe a full size.
When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle had a sofa bed, and my cousin and I used to use it whenever I’d sleep over. We thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
Sounds like a dream bed to me. Having recurring lower back issues, with the only salvation being sleeping on the floor, which is perfect for the bones, but a little too hard for the flesh. So, a slightly padded, almost-hard bed would work perfectly.
I was house-sitting for a friend and slept in the guest room (at her request- some people had me sleep in their beds, some in a guest bed setup). The bed itself wasn’t very comfortable, but not horrible. But.
She’s been in animal rescue for decades and has an average of about 40 cats at any time and is quick to euthanize when things go wrong (the house is actually really clean- partly because she has a housekeeper and partly because she puts them down if they start peeing anywhere they shouldn’t)… which means she’s had a LOT of cats die. And they have all been cremated. So the walls of the guest room are lined with shelves and shelves of cat ashes. Dozens and dozens of dead cats. A few photographs of them, but mostly just cat ashes in boxes or urns.
It’s maybe a liiiiiittle bit spooky. The living cats- the ones I was looking after- wouldn’t go into the guest room, but were happy to cuddle with me on the couch, so I mostly slept on the couch so we could keep each other company.
You win. That’s the worst guest bed I’ve heard of!